How are the mighty fallen ..

A sports writer for Yahoo!NZ, writing under the pseudonym of The Man in the Stands, joined the feeding frenzy around Lance Armstrong’s professional corpse. 

In a piece that, even by Yahoo!NZ standards, was remarkable for its emotive hyperbole, the writer expressed his disgust, shock, horror and revulsion at the – cowardly, cold-blooded, lying, deceiving, stealing, swindling, pilfering, cheating, con artist, ragbag, scumbag, monster. 

All that in a 440-word blog,

Unlike a lot of people who are queuing up to kick his corpse, I’ve never had a lot of time for Armstrong, but I refuse to join the likes of TMITS in baying for what they call "'justice"– but which, in truth, is vengeance. They want to see Armstrong suffer, and they justify that by claiming that they feel sympathy for his "victims" and outrage at his dishonesty. The truth is they’re full of anger, which prevents them from thinking and creates the potential for them to behave as badly as the object of their ire has done.

Armstrong’s offending is not unique; it’s not even unusual. He's the product of the confluence of massive corporate sponsorship of cycling (which started with American cyclist, Greg LeMond) and European cycling organisations that wanted to break into the rich US market. 

Armstrong was in the first-class carriage of a fast moving gravy train but he wasn’t the driver and he didn’t own the locomotive. He was able to do what he did because his corporate sponsors and sports officials turned a blind eye to what was going on, and they did so because his high-profile success was making them a load of money.

Nor is road cycling the only corporate-funded gravy train in professional sport, and it’s far from being the richest. You have only to look at golf, tennis, football and basketball to see that Armstrong’s wealth and his attitudes are anything but unusual.

Armstrong’s an elite and extremely skilled athlete in a demanding and very dangerous team sport; the use of drugs, plus his organisational ability and obsessive competitive drive, made him a phenomenal athlete. 

Had he been content with equaling the tour wins record he may have got away with it, but celebrity and power are notorious corrupters, and he came to believe his own narrative. He also hurt and angered enough people on the way up for his fall from grace to be emotional and very public. But, what made him behave badly is a quality common to all elite athletes – a single-minded determination to win. It is a small step from single-minded to ruthless.  

When Floyd Landis won Stage 17 of the 2006 Tour de France, anyone who knew cycling could tell he’d taken something, and given the way he was riding, that it was most likely to be testosterone. He went from riding like a stunned mullet the day before, to riding like a man possessed. That was incredibly dumb. 

Armstrong was clever and systematic in his use of banned substances and procedures, just like he was in his training and his team organisation. The training systems and procedures Michele Ferrari developed (EPO use aside) and which Armstrong utilised, and Armstrong’s race tactics, are now part and parcel of how professional cycling works. And Armstrong built on the American revolution in team organisation and application of technology that was started by Greg LeMond.

Did Armstrong force his team to use banned substances? In the sense that, to be of use to him they had to perform to his drug-enhanced level, that’s probably true. But, they did not have to stay with him and if they did so, it was because the rewards, in terms of money and professional profile, were great enough to stifle medical or ethical concerns. 

What of the claims that Armstrong "destroyed" people? 

Tyler Hamilton is doing the reformed character bit with his best-selling confessional book and appearances on the after-dinner speaker circuit. 

The most high-profile accuser is Betsy Andreu who speaks often and emotively about Armstrong having tried to destroy her family. However, Frankie Andreu worked with Armstrong for years after he and Betsy say they heard him admit to using banned substances in 1996, and they all remained close friends. The split came after the Andreus didn’t get the rewards they expected, first a contract renewal, and then a Directeur Sportif job.  

In an interview with Sports Illustrated recently, when Andreu was asked if she felt proud about her moral stance, she said “Yeah, I get that. But sometimes it feels like there's no profit in the truth, right? Would you rather have Lance's money right now, or my reputation?” 

Betsy Andreu may be as hooked on celebrity as Armstrong. She is also an absolutist and is as driven and obsessive as he is but is emotional and an ardent Catholic, while Armstrong hides his emotions and is an atheist. If he suddenly found God, perhaps America and Betsy Andreu would find it easier to forgive him.

Andreu said that she knew Floyd Landis’ Christian upbringing would lead him to confessing his sins but the path to that confession took a remarkably circuitous route via a book called "Positively False," solicitation of legal funds from his fans, and attacking Greg LeMond. 

In 2010, Landis filed a lawsuit against Armstrong and others to force repayment of the $30m+ in government sponsorship of the US Postal team. Landis (eventually) admitted to doping while riding for the team which he now claims "defrauded" the US government, a fraud that he benefitted from, and he now stands to make $millions by suing Armstrong and his financial backers, for that fraud. If successful, the action will give Landis 15-25% of the $300m if the U.S. Department of Justice joins the suit and takes the lead role, or 25-30% if he pursues the case alone. This is a travesty of whistle blowing legislation, but perhaps he’ll donate the proceeds to charity. 

If Landis, or any of the other post-hoc bean-spillers had serious moral scruples about doping they would have distanced themselves from Armstrong.  If Armstrong is personally to blame for what he did, so are they.  The only people who have a right to be aggrieved are the completely clean riders who might otherwise have won stages or tours, and the lower order of domestiques who could reasonably claim to have been pressured into doping.

Armstrong’s greatest mistake was to deny his offending past the point where the denials had any credibility. His nemesis, David Walsh, has been on anti-doping crusade for thirteen years and his pursuit of Armstrong became as obsessive as Armstrong’s pursuit of power and success. Walsh was right but there is a strong vein of moralism running through all this, and it suits that narrative to cast Armstrong in the role of a ruthless Machiavellian mastermind. It also makes for great press and television and now the only way he can slide out from under it is to turn supergrass like Landis – or find God.

Professional sports people and those who back them always skirt the rule boundaries and the rewards, in terms of money and celebrity, are now so enormous that many take the risk of doping. 

The US Olympic cycling team used blood doping in 1984 and it may be endemic in many sports that have not yet had the scrutiny to which road cycling has been subjected. The reason doping became endemic in road cycling is partly due to the physical demands of the sport itself and partly the pressures imposed by corporate sponsorship.

Before we all drown in the sea of smug, sanctimonious twaddle that is pouring out of the media, let’s consider where the pressure to use performance-enhancing drugs comes from and where performance enhancement starts. It’s okay to use a hyperbaric chamber and to train at altitude but not to use EPO, which has the same effects. 

It can be argued that the prophylactic use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories enhances performance in that it allows athletes to push their body beyond its normal limits in competition. NSAIDs can be bought over the counter, and team doctors hand them out during events and matches, despite the fact that the drugs are a metabolic and circulatory time bomb and especially dangerous if the person taking them is dehydrated. Logically, NSAIDs should be banned in sporting competition just as they are banned in horse racing. 

I’m not excusing Armstrong but I think the greater fault lies with corporate sponsorship of sport and its branding mania. Commentators should reserve some of their hyperbole for Nike, Trek, Oakley, Shimano, the TV networks and all the other corporations that made $billions out of Armstrong and those that are making $billions out of other elite sportspeople.

I reserve my pity and concern for the workers in poorly regulated countries, who are paid a pittance to produce shoddy commodities that mythologised athletes are grossly overpaid to sell to a dumb or uncaring public. 

In that sense, we, the consumers of those products, are as much to blame as athletes who take shortcuts. If we really cared about "cheating", we’d stop buying the products that encourage it. 

Racism

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable… like all Pakehas would be happy with their daughter coming home with a Maori boy? The answer is they wouldn’t.”

What struck me about this statement when it was first made was the patriarchal prejudice that who might impregnate your daughter is more important than who your son might impregnate. Who your son marries may be a different matter of course.

But I was more interested in the fact that Hone Harawira’s statement and the "white M-F’ers" quote, (written in a private email and published without his knowledge or consent) were widely cited on public fora as a counterbalance to racial remarks made by several white commentators.

Harawira may have meant what he said or he may have been winding people up by recycling a common Pakeha prejudice. Whatever his intention, it resulted in him being accused of being racist and to the simplistically, and to the ideologically minded, "Māori racism" cancels out "white racism".

We humans are intensely social animals with very distinctive faces and an extraordinary ability to recognise subtle difference in facial and body gestures. We devote a large amount of our brain to deciphering and storing visual information about other humans.

In the course of our social evolution we have developed such widely differing cultures that the members of those cultures can find it hard to understand each other and not just in terms of speech.

But, you only have to look at the babies and very small children of all cultures and classes – to see the indicators of a common heritage. Tiny tots are never racist or snobs. That’s acquired; learned for the most part from their parents.

Recognition and wariness of difference or a preference for those who are the same as you, does not necessarily mean you are racist.

Racism is commonly defined as prejudice or unfair discrimination based on race. For that definition to mean anything there has to be an underlying acceptance of the idea that there are distinct "human races", the members of which possess definable attributes and characteristics.

This is the basis of the broad, quasi-scientific categories of Australoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. There is a complex debate about the extent to which there may be definable "racial" differences but racism is not about any actual differences, it is about relative superiority and inferiority.

The origins of racism lie in the misappropriation of Darwin’s ideas about evolution to create a "scientific" basis for the superiority of the white skinned peoples of the world – and the English speaking white peoples in particular.

If humans evolved from ape-like ancestors any humans who, because of the shape of their skull or colour of their skin were closer to that ancestor, were deemed to be not as highly evolved.

These ideas, which reached their peak at the height of Britain’s imperial expansion, proved to be useful in legitimating colonialism and assuaging guilt over slavery.

The horrors of the early African slave trade had not required an ideological mask largely because the lives of the ordinary European sailors, labourers and paupers were not so far removed from those of the slaves, ie they experienced a lesser degree of exploitation and brutality and had only nominal freedom.

But science and the rise of an educated middle class demanded a more sophisticated justification for such a brutal and cruel economic exploitation, and for the processes involved in annexing other people’s countries.

The answer lay in the twin hierarchies of race and social class, helped along by notions of male supremacy.

Colonisation was said to have brought the benefits of white (superior) civilisation to the dark (inferior) races; just as industrial capitalism brought benefits to the (inferior)  labouring classes.

Thus a natural curiosity about or even wariness towards those who don’t look or act the same as us, morphed into beliefs about "racial" superiority and inferiority that were used to justify brutal economic exploitation, enslavement and genocide – and still are.

That brutality in turn was justified as being the result of "human nature".

But this didn’t and doesn’t happen simply because of human nature. It’s as much human nature to be inclusive, cooperative and compassionate, as it is to be exclusive, uncaring and harshly competitive.

Racism as an ideology serves a definite function; it divides – and to divide is necessary in order to conquer and rule.

I get very concerned about the overuse of the term "racism" – because the application of it to any and all prejudiced views or conduct risks emptying it of all political meaning.

The fact is, we all discriminate; every waking moment we make choices about how to act that are based on perceptions of difference. We also all prejudge, i.e., we arrive at conclusions based on incomplete or biased evidence – very often what someone in a position of authority has told us is true.

Sometimes those processes of discrimination and prejudgement result in outcomes that are good ones for us and not harmful to others; but sometimes they result in unjust attitudes and conduct towards others.

There are those for whom it is advantageous that people take decisions based on biased or incomplete information. A most potent element of this ideological strategy is the creation and promulgation of negative stereotypes based on exaggerated difference, and the counterposing of those against equally exaggerated positive stereotypes.

If those stereotypes gain added legitimacy through an appeal to religion or science or by tapping into real concerns and fears, their ability to increase prejudice and to foment division is enhanced.

The fact that many societies place a social premium on lighter toned skin is often cited as evidence that colour prejudice is both universal and natural. But the origin of this isn‘t "racism" but social class.

The labouring classes or castes had weathered skin. Only those who had others to labour for them could keep the soft, paler, clean skins they were born with. Thus a paler, soft skin on the face and hands was and remains the most potent symbol of privilege, marking out the owner of it as a person who does not have to labour.

The Chinese fetish of tiny bound feet had a parallel in the Victorian fetish of tiny corseted waists. Exaggerated fashions such as sleeves that hang down over the hands, extremely high heels, very long fingernails were (and are) social markers sending out the message that this is a person who does not labour – either at all, or at least, not by hand.

The seeds of social Darwinism’s racial hierarchy fell on very fertile soil.

Martin Van Beynen (Press, Oct 16) argued that Paul Henry was not being racist because he did not overtly promote the superiority of one race over another.

But, as a current affairs presenter, Henry’s personal prejudices are combined with a considerable power to influence public opinion. That combination of race-based prejudice and the power to influence others took his statements into the realms of racism.

The same applies to Tony Veitch’s statement about Serena Williams, to Paul Holmes’ labelling of the UN General Secretary as a "cheeky darky", and to Michael Laws’ steady stream of prejudice. We all know that the "feral underclass" is code for brown-skinned people.

Racism needs to be viewed as the combination of negative prejudices based on skin colour or social or cultural attributes, and unfairly discriminatory acts that gain legitimacy through the exercise of social, political, economic or military power.

That was, and largely remains, a European phenomenon but it is not inherent to Europeans. Does the ruling class in China, in its pursuit of the wealth of Africa, have a greater regard for the African people than the Englishmen who grew rich on the slave trade?

This is where Hone Harawira needs to be careful. He may have very good reasons, historical and contemporary, personal and cultural, for feeling antipathy to white New Zealanders. But the moment he generalises the conduct and characteristics of some white New Zealanders to all white New Zealanders and uses his political power to add weight to his words, he enters that arena where personal prejudice becomes racism.

However his power to influence is arguably way less than that of the white majority.

To understand why the words "nigger" or "black Mfer" in the mouth of a white person has more power than the words "honky" or "white MFers" in the mouth of a black or brown person, you only need to look at which continent is still being pillaged, what peoples are still at the bottom the world’s hierarchy of power and privilege.

In the vicious, divisive and cruel hierarchy of colour, white still trumps everything, yellow trumps brown – and yes, sometimes brown trumps black.

Africa – the cradle of human kind, whose peoples’ forced labour laid the foundations of industrial capitalism and the Europeans’ world dominance, is the richest continent with the poorest people.

And that’s the context in which remarks like Henry’s and co have to be put.